Increasing Student Engagement

INCREASING STUDENT ENGAGEMENT

Would you like a classroom of engaged students, focused on learning? Are you interested in decreasing acting out behavior that distracts from instruction and learning? Do you want to increase the time spent on instruction? “Increasing Student Engagement” can help you with these and more. You will learn to use:

• A variety of activities and assignments within a lesson to increase student engagement
• Strategies and opportunities that help students practice, review and apply the new knowledge after collaborative groups are done
• Interactive lessons with a variety of activities such as group discussions, use of white boards, technology, manipulatives, group responses, and continuous questioning
• Use of a variety of activities and assignments within a lesson to increase student engagement
• Group students effectively for interactive discussions and activities
• Increase use of formative assessments to drive next steps in instruction
• Use the TAPPLE strategy of questioning to engage students
• Increase use of Turn and Talk with focus questions to increase student engagement
• Increase use of Attention Getters to signal end of discussion groups
• Use strategies such as Case Studies to increase active involvement on the part of students
• Use Opportunities to Respond ( OTR) including group responses

Research supports the connection between engagement, achievement and school behavior across levels of economic and social advantage and disadvantage. Experience tells us that classrooms with high levels of student engagement are a more welcoming environment for both the teacher and the student.

Module 1:

Learn how to:

• Use of a variety of activities and assignments within a lesson to increase student engagement
• Group students effectively for interactive discussions and activities
• Increase use of formative assessments to drive next steps in instruction
• Use the TAPPLE strategy of questioning to engage students
• Increase use of Turn and Talk with focus questions to increase student engagement
• Increase use of Attention Getters to signal end of discussion groups
• Use strategies such as Case Studies to increase active involvement on the part of students
• Use Opportunities to Respond ( OTR) including group responses

Module 2:

Learn how to:

• Increase use of successful collaborative learning techniques
• Introduce Learning Targets and then teach them
• Make connections between prior knowledge and new content knowledge to increase comprehension
• Use a multitude of strategies to assess student learning has taken place
• Use strategies and opportunities that help students practice, review and apply the new knowledge after collaborative groups are done
• Plan for errors and immediately correct through prompting, cueing, modeling and re-teaching
• Use effective and varied criteria to group students into informal, formal and base groups
• Use Model lessons to teach students instructional routines for working productively in groups
• Establish a culture of risk taking. Students are not afraid to make mistakes, so there is a culture of growth. Mistakes are seen as part of the learning process.
• Increase use of oral language on the part of students. Less teacher talk
• Increase use of the Gradual Release of Responsibility.
• Use anchor charts to model the steps of accountable talk
• Rubrics for students to do self-reflection
• Continually assess the effectiveness of the groups

Module 3

Learn how to:

• Increase pacing so the students are intellectually engaged in the lesson.
• Increase use of technology to engage students: photos, video clips
• Structure lessons with clearly defined beginnings and endings
• Plan for when, to whom and where to interject continuous questions
• Ensure pacing is perky not pokey with think time built in when necessary
• Get 8-12 correct student responses per minute
• Create interactive lessons with a variety of activities
• Use the strategy of ‘brightening the lines’ which clearly defines learning segments
• Increase the use of student focused activities